


And Worse I May be Yet

by Hrafnsvaengr



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Clint Needs a Hug, Deaf Clint Barton, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-04
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-04-30 01:43:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5145647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hrafnsvaengr/pseuds/Hrafnsvaengr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following a trail of mysterious radio stations set up by HYDRA, Clint searches for the secretive Operation Whirling Dervish. This is what he found.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [adamsgirl42 (eddiessofa)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eddiessofa/gifts).



> This is something my brain spat out at me when I came across a prompt on adamsgirl42's blog. It likely won't be too long, but anyway, here's the first part.

14 months, 12 days, and too many fucking hours. It had taken more than a year to find the source of the encrypted radio traffic.

No longer satisfied with their high tech solutions, HYDRA had gone back to using number stations, dozens of them. Each blared out a shriek of static once an hour, followed by a pleasant digitised female voice reading a passage from Shakespeare, then a set of numbers. 241 numbers every single time. The stations had gained nicknames, most based on the passage quoted before the real message. The most well known ones were Ophelia, Mercutio, Othello, and of course, To Be, which had begun to be called Toby by many of the number station watchers around the world.

Over the first few months, SHIELD had no luck in ferreting out the meaning of the coded messages. So they had sent in Clint undercover. It had taken him three months alone before he had worked his way into working one of the stations. That's when they made their first get.

Turns out, HYDRA had made more than half of the stations dummy targets. Oh, they were still sending coded messages, that was true, but Station Ophelia, for instance? Read out the fourth paragraph from the third page of a local paper from Stanley on the Falkland Islands.

It had been Clint's job to convert messages into code by turning each word into a four-digit sequence of numbers by using a sort of code dictionary. Lookup a word, find the number, write it down, pass it along. Every day the dictionaries were changed, every day Clint found a newspaper clipping meticulously snipped out of the Stanley paper, a dictionary, a pen, and a single piece of unlined foolscap. He was searched on the way in and the way out, then monitored the rest of the day to ensure he didn't communicate anything he learned. It was only thanks to a hasty retrofit to his hearing aids by SHIELD technicians that he'd managed to get a secure connection with the outside world.

Eventually, after another six months of simply converting messages from the newspaper, he'd been moved from Station Ophelia to one of the lesser known stations, Station Lear. The message recorded at the beginning of its hourly transmission? “Then kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!” Very subtle, of course.

It was there that he'd found out what HYDRA was doing under the guise of Operation Whirling Dervish. It was in the messages he encoded at Station Lear that he had found James Buchanan Barnes.


	2. I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, apparently the chapters in this are just going to be short little snippets. I thought it was going to end up as a through-written story, but my brain has decided we need chapters. So here you are.

“You are a very lucky man, Mr Lefebvre. Few of our employees ever make it past the evaluations, let alone with your… Disadvantage.” The small man vaguely waved in the direction of Clint's ears, his thickly accented voice making the task of understanding him more difficult than it already was in the awfully echoing acoustics in the tunnels he was being led through. “You've been with the company for how long did you say, Mr Lefebvre?”

Clint turned his attention back to the man, putting on his most congenial smile. “Fourteen months, give or take. I first worked in Québec in Station 579. And please, sir, call me René,” he said in his most convincing Canadian accent. His cover was as a Québec separatist drawn to the far edges of that movement. HYDRA had always lived on the edges of movements like that; less scrutiny, more extreme views, more distrust of governments.

“Of course, of course. Station 579… Which station is that again?”

“Whiles, like a puff’d and--”

The man interrupted, finishing the quote that began each transmission, “reckless libertine, himself the primrose path of dalliance treads. Of course. I believe it is called Ophelia by some, is it not?”

Clint shrugged noncommittally.

“At any rate,” the man continued, “You may call me Rexhep if you like. Or Dr Hoxha.” He said the names differently than Clint had expected upon seeing them written. Apparently, ‘xh’ was to be pronounced like the ‘dg’ in edge. Or it was close enough that Clint couldn’t tell the difference. While pondering this, Dr Hoxha had continued talking, “You know, like the old First Secretary? Leader of the _Partia e Punës e Shqipërisë_? ” Seeing the lack of comprehension on Clint’s face, the man continued, “Perhaps not. Canada--”

Clint interrupted, “Québec. I’m not Canadian,” he insisted. It was a habit that he’d gotten into over the past months, denying that he was Canadian, just like any good extremist would.

The idea of extremist Canadians, even ones who insisted they weren’t Canadian, still seemed very strange to Clint, despite his thorough knowledge of French. He had spent a month in Québec in preparation for this assignment, picking up the particular accent of the province and learning what he might need to know that wasn’t in the thick dossier he’d been given. Born in Sherbrooke into the Lefebvre family, seventh-generation francophone Québécois dairy farmers, joined an extreme separatist group at 27 and worked his way into the organisation until being recruited by La Compagnie contre Hercule. Who was La Compagnie? Why, HYDRA, of course.

“Ah, yes, well, Québec is very far away from my little Albania, so it is not so surprising that you wouldn’t know of our history. I dare say, I know very little of yours.” The little man continued through the twisting tunnels until he found a door labelled simply **KAZERMË/КАЗАРМА** in stencilled white letters.

“Here is where you will stay. Your things from Station 2718 have already been transferred. I presume that is where you first learned of Project Dervish, Mr Le--” the man grinned at Clint sheepishly and waggled a finger, “Ah-ah! Of course, I remember, I almost forgot--that is where you heard of it, René, yes?”

Clint nodded. This man, Dr Hoxha, had met him not twenty minutes ago and had already said more words to him than anyone else in his long time at Station Ophelia. Where everyone else was deathly quiet about their jobs, Rexhep chattered. That really was the only word for it. Like a rodent.

“I thought as much. Few of our employees get recommended to leave Station 579, let alone Station 2718. It seems you are a man of rare talents. The Company is delighted to have you working here at Project Dervish. I will be back before too long to give you a grand tour of our facilities. Should you need anything, the canteen is down the hall there to the left. Simply ask to speak to Rexhep and they will pass along any requests for me to approve.” The small man held out his hand genially, “Welcome to Albania and welcome to Project Dervish.”

Clint shook his hand and pushed open the heavy metal door to the barracks. Inside was a double row of cots, each with a large steamer trunk at the foot of it and a privacy curtain separating individual berths. Home sweet home. At least for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm perpetually surprised on here by the reception that works get and this is no exception. Thank you all so much for reading it, liking it, and commenting on it; it makes my day every time I get that little email saying that someone likes something I've written. So thank you, my dear readers.


	3. II

It had been thirty-eight days and Rexhep hadn't returned to give him the grand tour. He had spent his time going between the canteen, the quartermaster’s office, the gym, and the barracks. He ate, he slept, he ran around the incongruously well lit dirt track, he filled out requisition forms. Thirty-eight days of essentially nothing.

The morning of the thirty-ninth day, Clint was awakened by the gentle shaking of his shoulder. He jumped up, looking around only to see a very startled young woman with black hair pulled into a tight bun and a clipboard clutched to her chest. She began to speak but he put up a finger for her to wait.

After his hearing aids were in--so what he mostly didn't need them anymore;  _ they _ didn't have to know that--he nodded for her to continue.

“Mr LeFebvre, sir, Dr Rexhep has asked me to make sure you're dressed and ready for the inspection of the facility in one hour. He told me to bring you a suit to wear,” She motioned to the plastic bag guarding a neatly pressed suit on his trunk, “And told me to make sure you were well washed and clean.” She had the decency at least to blush then, hiding her face behind her clipboard.

“It's about time I heard from him.” Clint stood, stretching his arms above his head, fingertips just brushing the low ceiling. “Well, come on then…”

“Jane. Supervisor Jane Pennyworth.” She smiled and turned on a well-pointed heel and led out the room. He followed after a few minutes to change into the new clothes. He listened to her chat benignly about how he was finding it here, how his family were doing, how the food was, and any number of other things he answered automatically. Here was fine, he didn’t talk to his family, the food was great, yes the quartermaster had given him anything he needed, no he hadn’t found the coffee place, yes the gym was great.

After passing through another of the base’s ubiquitous airlocks, she stopped outside a closed door onto which a sign had been crudely taped. “Dr Rexhep Hoxha -- Director of Operations and Logistics”.

“ _ Më falni, Doktor Hoxha? _ ” Jane called in fluent Albanian as she knocked on the door, “ _ Zotëri LeFebvre është këtu për të parë ju. _ ”

After a moment, a reply came from inside in the rapid boisterous Albanian of Dr Hoxha. Jane turned to him with a curt smile, “He'll be out in a moment, Mr LeFebvre. I'll see you later.” She turned and walked away, leaving him alone in the deserted hallway.

It took only a minute or so of Clint nervously tapping his shoe against the concrete floor for the door to be thrown open wide and Dr Hoxha to greet him with a warm grin. “Hello! Hello, René. You are ready to get going now?” The doctor looked him up and down quickly while he stepped out the door and locked his office behind him. “Yes, you look dressed nicely enough. We have to worry about investors, that's all. I wouldn't care if you came to the tour naked!”

The doctor laughed gleefully and Clint chuckled good naturedly along with the joke. “Well, after all, Mr--René,” Rexhep waggled a finger again, “You thought I forgot, didn't you. Not me! Not Rexhep Hoxha! What was I saying?”

The two of them stopped for a moment in the middle of the hallway while Rexhep muttered absently in Albanian. “Aha!” he exclaimed as he began leading them again, “Like I was saying, after all René, it is no great cost for me to admit to you that you are a very attractive man. I'm sure you already know this though, yes?”

Clint shrugged noncommittally, simply following Rexhep as he lead. The doctor continued to chatter on, occasionally asking for Clint’s input but not seeming bothered that he never got more than a shrug or a grunt. They went through a number of labs, each with more and more arcane apparatus doing more and more opaque things with wires, computers, chemicals, and at one point what looked to be an oversized crab. 

After being shown through yet another operations centre where a large map on the wall was regularly updated with data of some kind or another, the doctor had lead them back to the same hallway his barracks was in. Tucked down the hall, around a dead-end corner, was a door that appeared to be no more than a janitor’s closet.

“And here, René, we have the heart of our little centre here. You may have been wondering why it took so long for this tour to happen, yes?” The doctor looked to him but didn’t wait for a response, “It was because we were doing several extra checks of your security clearances and ensuring you hadn’t smuggled any illicit devices into here. Can’t have you being naughty, can we?”

The doctor pulled a small keychain out of one of the pockets of his lab coat and put the key in the lock. “Here we go. After this, we will go one at a time. The biolocking mechanism will not work if we are together. It gets confused because I am not you and you are not me so it doesn’t know who we are and it would kill us both! Can’t have that.”

Rexhep gave him a boyish grin as he handed Clint the key and stepped through the door, closing it behind him. It opened after another moment, the doctor poking his head through, “Count slowly to a hundred, then come through. You will see what to do when you are inside.” And with that, Clint was alone in the hallway.

He counted slowly as instructed then placed the key in the lock. It was just a small key, the kind you might lock a desk drawer or a closet with, and the other side of the door was a short hall, no more than four feet long. A heavy steel door was at the other end, with no obvious way of getting through. He stepped inside the small space and closed the door behind him.

Nothing happened. While he waited, he noticed the small sign taped to the door, much like that or Rexhep’s office. It read simply “Project Dervish - Asset Containment” in a handwritten scrawl. 

The walls around him clicked several times and he held his breath, waiting for something to happen. A voice came, not a computer though, a woman’s, perhaps a recording. “Please breathe normally and stand in a comfortable posture. Extend your hands in front of you. A detailed biometric scan is being performed.”

Another series of ominous clicking sounds and there was a friendly chime. “Welcome, René Lefebvre. Your pass code is confirmed.”

The door slid open and Clint stepped through into the dim room beyond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I dunno. This might be shit. I can't tell and I'm kind of hating everything I write right now, so here ya go. Hopefully this'll be done soon and hopefully I'll get the next chapter of Samovar out, but no promises.
> 
> Regardless if it's shit or not, hope you like it, if you do feel free to comment, kudos, whatever. You know the drill.


End file.
